Indian beauty and foreign spirits: The golden casket in the merchant of Venice

Clayton G MACKENZIE*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    Abstract

    The casket scenes in The Merchant of Venice are powerful arbiters of success and failure. The casket challenge is loaded with culturally-specific signifiers which favour local contenders. Bassanio rejects the gold casket because he is aware that European moral iconographies repudiate earthly wealth (though, ironically, Bassanio is a poor illustration of the principle). The Prince of Morocco, by contrast, understandably supposes gold to be an appropriate metaphor for love - gold was, after all, the prima materia of North Africa. Morocco is on every level more worthy than Bassanio but fails because he chooses through foreign eyes.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)467-474
    Number of pages8
    JournalActa Orientalia
    Volume68
    Issue number4
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Dec 2015

    Scopus Subject Areas

    • Cultural Studies
    • History
    • Literature and Literary Theory

    User-Defined Keywords

    • Bassanio
    • Caskets
    • Fortune
    • Gold
    • Iconography
    • Morocco
    • Portia
    • Shakespeare

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Indian beauty and foreign spirits: The golden casket in the merchant of Venice'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this